


Heartbeat

by grelleswife



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Cuddles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Other, demon purrs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-11-02 09:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20705297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grelleswife/pseuds/grelleswife
Summary: "My body’s heart does not always beat, but I make sure that it does now. For reasons that elude me, she finds the sound soothing."Sebastian comforts Grelle after she endures a horrible nightmare.





	Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> When life is stressing you out, you write Sebagrelle.
> 
> I got radical and tried out first person in this oneshot. I'm not at all confident that I did Sebastian's voice justice, so constructive criticism is welcome!

A nightmare has seized Miss Sutcliff in its poisoned talons. Her left hand clenches the sheets, ripping the fabric thread by thread. Her soul is silently screaming, and its cries pierce me like shards of broken glass. Pitch-black pain, corrosive, scalding. I scarcely recognize her face, for anguish has contorted it into a mask. What horrors is she reliving? Do the spectres of her troubled past torment her yet again?

Tears trickle down her face, silver in the moonlight, and the briny scent of misery assails me.

I cannot bear it. Schadenfreude is a demon’s most delectable pleasure, more mouthwatering than the chocolate _gateau_ in which my young master takes such appalling delight, but _not when the one suffering is her_.

“Miss Sutcliff.”

My hand grabs her freckled shoulder in desperation, shaking her.

A pained moan escapes her lips.

I shake harder. Please wake. _Please_. If I cannot bring her light, let me at least hold and hide her in my own darkness, where her fire can burn out of the chill wind's reach.

“Miss Sutcliff.”

Anxiety transposes my voice to a different key. It turns me to a frayed string stretched far too taut, on the verge of snapping.

She gasps herself awake, and her terrified eyes stare at me in blank incomprehension.

“Grelle, it is I. It’s Sebastian.”

But she remains submerged in the past, wrapped in the vile fog of her torturous dream. Her breathing is panicked and shallow.

“I’m here, _rufina_. No harm will befall you. It’s just me, Sebastian.”

Quivering lips struggle to articulate the syllables. “Se…se…” The voice that emerges is frail and pitiful. Seeing her like this makes something clench inside my chest.

She needs contact. That will ground her. My arms encircle her, and I pray to whoever may listen to demons that my “hugging” technique is correct.

That exquisite hair…fairy strands. My fingers caress it as if to comb out the tendrils of despair that have ensnared her mind.

“Se…Seb-ba…Sebastian,” she chokes out, and my Grelle returns to me, albeit sorely shaken.

“I’m here.” The repetition helps, too. That is something I have learned over the course of nights like this one.

“Oh damn, darling, I’m so sorry. I…this dream…it…”

“Shh, shh.” My body’s heart does not always beat, but I make sure that it does now. For reasons that elude me, she finds the sound soothing.

“Do you wish to talk about it?”

She presses her cheek against my chest. “I…can’t…”

“That’s fine.” Words do not reach the places to which Grelle descends in her nightmares. I purr as loudly as I can, and, to my relief, she laughs a little, though the sound is hoarse and faint. “You really are just like a cat, Bassy.”

I simply smile, and she falls silent, listening to my contrived heartbeat.

For her, I always have a heart.


End file.
